(One of the New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of 2011) In 2008, expatriate British historian, essayist, and political commentator Tony Judt was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), yet he continued to write and speak until his death in 2010. This remarkable collection of essays from those last two years charts Judt's various experiences and remembrances as they filtered through his humane and prodigious mind, where he composed and stored them in "mental rooms" for later dictation. His youthful love of one London bus route, for example, evolves into a reflection on public civility and interwar urban planning, while a series of road trips across America lead to an appreciation of American history and to his eventual acquisition of citizenship.

"'Loss is loss,' Judt writes, 'and nothing is gained by calling it a nicer name.' Many of these chronological essays written while Judt struggled with ALS first appeared in the New York Review of Books, but taken together, they offer an astute portrait of a life cut shortóbut one also fully, richly lived. Judt writes with the same incisive intellectual clarity and polished writing of his other books, here evoking specific experiences formative to his childhood and intellectual growth. Yet, as critics point out, The Memory Chalet is no typical memoir. Instead, it goes well beyond personal, self-driven recollections to ruminate on the larger importance of Judt's experiences. In the end, 'perhaps The Memory Chalet isn't an uplifting work,' concludes the Denver Post. 'It is better than that: It is a sustaining one'."óBookmarks Magazine